Dell as a brand name is known by almost everyone for their value for money desktops and laptops. Some may have even heard of Dell’s ‘phonelet’, the Streak, though it’s sales figures weren’t a major success. But a mobile phone with a Dell logo slapped on isn’t something you see often in the UK.
The Venue Pro is Dell’s newer and more promising offering into the mobile market, one which has caught the eye of many thanks to it’s rather unique form factor. There is less than a handful of smartphones with a sliding portrait qwerty, none of which offer Windows Phone 7 like the Venue Pro. Despite being announced as one of the original launch phones of Windows Phone 7 last year, it has been subject to countless delays and only very recently has the long awaited Venue Pro been available.
So was the Venue Pro worth the delays and consequent heartache? Read on to find out.
In an update that’s due to automatically roll out to users over the next few days, Spotify will now support syncing with you iPod. A significant milestone for the Spotify service.
Key features include:
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The ability to manage your iPod in Spotify
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The all new Spotify download service, offering some of the most competitive MP3 prices available
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The Spotify Mobile app now available to all to sync MP3 playlists
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From today, Spotify is the only music player you’ll need
Full press release and images follow.
World’s First Smartphone With Fingerprint Security Hits The UK – ATRIX Launches Exclusively On Orange
What smartphone suits the gadget fan for whom the world is not enough? On sale exclusively from Orange from tomorrow, Motorola ATRIX is the world’s first smartphone to have an in-built biometric fingerprint reader for enhanced personal security.
The award winning Orange ATRIX is tipped to be one of the biggest releases in 2011 and is sure to impress the most stylish of aspiring secret agents. The fingerprint reader allows you to unlock the phone with the swipe of a finger ensuring the mobile phone remains for your eyes only.
The device also features a powerful 1GHz dual core processor so you can open web pages twice as fast as most other smartphones, as well as having the capacity to connect up to a HDTV to show HD video, games, music and more.
Back in February of this year HTC announced a number of new handsets including 3 that were direct upgrades/replacements of existing models. We’ve already had a look at the HTC Desire S and the HTC Incredible S so now it’s time for the HTC Wildfire S to go on test.
Its predecessor, the HTC Wildfire, has been on sale for almost a year and sales have been good for HTC as the handsets has been available both SIM free and through a number of UK operators both PAYG and on contract. In fact, as an entry level Android handset, I’d say that the Wildfire was responsible for introducing a whole new group of users to the wonders of Android.
The Wildfire S is similar to last years model, virtually the same size and just a little bit lighter. Main difference is in the screen being twice the number of pixels at 320×480 HVGA resolution but still remaining 3.2″ in size.
HTC have also done away with the optical trackpad in each of this years models and the Wildfire S is no different so the area below the screen is a lot more ‘clean’ if a little bland.
Other changes go beyond the cosmetic and we’ll look at these throughout the review so be sure to read on to learn more.
Johannes over at NewGadgets.de got his hands on a working sample of the 8.9 inch tablet, and has shot a short video. The Samsung Galaxy 8.9 and 10.1 are probably the two most anticipated tablets this year. Samsung had a decent debut with the 7 inch Galaxy Tab, and hopes to really hit the big time with its pair of new Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) Galaxy Tabs. Check out the video below.
New BlackBerry Bold 9900 and 9930 Smartphones are the Thinnest and Most Powerful BlackBerry Smartphones yet, Featuring the Renowned BlackBerry Keyboard Together with a Brilliant Touch Screen and the New BlackBerry 7 OS
Waterloo, ON – Research In Motion (RIM) (NASDAQ: RIMM; TSX: RIM) today unveiled two new BlackBerry Bold smartphones. The high-performance BlackBerry Bold 9900 and 9930 smartphones feature a stunning and iconic design that integrates an incredibly easy-to-use BlackBerry keyboard with a brilliant, high resolution, capacitive touch screen. These exceptional smartphones are built on a new, performance-driven platform powered by the BlackBerry® 7 operating system and designed to deliver the ultimate in communications, multimedia and productivity for users around the world.
"The new BlackBerry Bold smartphones and BlackBerry 7 OS are inspired by millions of customers around the world who want the ultimate combination of performance, functionality and style," said Mike Lazaridis, President and Co-CEO, Research In Motion. "These fully-loaded and beautifully crafted smartphones offer a highly refined user experience with blazingly fast performance, a brilliant touch screen and an outstanding typing experience."
There is an obsession at the moment with dual-core CPU’s in phones with the Optimus 2X already on sale and HTC’s Sensation due out soon both sporting whizy new dual-core mobile CPU’s.
Now we’ve already see the benchmarks of Qualcomm’s latest MSM8660 CPU which runs at 1.5GHz, impressive enough for sure but a few days ago Qualcomm uploaded a demo video of the new Snapdragon in use within one of their own development devices. In the video, which I’ve embedded below, you can see them show off HTML5 video streaming, Flash video streaming, and 1080p playback. Not only that but there’s multichannel audio support and a phenomenal user interface.
Oh and they’ve crammed in a 13 mega-pixel camera on the back.
Check out the game demos too! I WANT ONE!!
Samsung are back with another handset using the Galaxy name, this time the Galaxy Pro. One of just a couple of Android handsets to have a fixed, forward-facing QWERTY keyboard.
The keyboard on the Galaxy Pro is quite large, the keys are significantly bigger than the keys on a BlackBerry for example and as a result the Pro is quite a wide bodied handset, a fairly large slab.
The 2.8″ screen is a capacitive touchscreen which, as a BlackBerry user, takes some getting used to. I all too frequently tried using the keyboard or looking for a trackpad to interact with menus. It’s a shame though that the screen is only QVGA, the resolution feels really cramped.
Check out the video below where I unbox the Galaxy Pro and then take a look at the user interface as well as a few key features. The review will be here soon.
The Dell Venue Pro was announced quite some time ago and it was all the way back in October that James first had the chance to play with the a sample. For some reason there have been lots of delays for this handset which, as a result, means that it only recently went on sale. Whether this has anything to do with Windows Phone 7 rather than hardware, as has been the claims on Twitter, is pure speculation.
The Venue Pro is the first Windows Phone 7 smartphone to have a forward-facing, sliding QWERTY keyboard. Hardware QWERTY fans may well be pleased by this one.
With a 4.1″ screen and sizable bezel and the sliding mechanism, the Venue Pro is far from a small and lightweight handset. In fact is has to be one of the largest and heaviest phones I can think or right now.
This is actually my second go at unboxing the Dell Venue Pro. As I mention in the video below, it has a curved screen on the front which for same reason caused the autofocus in my video camera to have a fit. So sorry for the delay in getting this video up!
According to the Google Mobile blog, Google has begun it’s roll out of Android 2.3.4 which will begin being sent to Nexus S handsets sometime in the near future. Google will bring a new key feature in 2.3.4, Video Chat. The chat will operate on your android device through the Gmail and GTalk applications and will allow video chats to take place with someone else on a compatible phone, tablet or any computer. Video chat fans can breathe a sigh of relief as the video chat feature will be available over the mobile network and Wi-Fi.
Using the new features is simple. On your Android device, from the Google Talk contacts list, you’ll see a video and voice chat icon next to each contact. Touch the button for the feature you’d like to use, and chat away.
Video can be paused while audio chat continues if you need to navigate elsewhere during a video session. During voice or video chat, text chats from that contact are overlaid on the device screen.
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